Beyond the fire

Five days after the fire that destroyed Wiser Recycling’s Approved Authorised Treatment Facility in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, Managing Director Russell Hirst reflects on how far the company has come in a week:

Is it only five days since fire destroyed our St Ives plant? It seems that day was a week all on its own. I wasn’t at the site last Monday afternoon but my thanks go to our excellent team that reacted so efficiently, ensuring the building was promptly evacuated and no one was hurt.

I would also like to thank the Fire Service, watching them go about their work was impressive to say the least. The organisation, discipline, communication, control, clear direction and method is a lesson to any business.

The Wiser Group management team of Dominic Hirst, Nicky Minnett, Paul Duggan and Charles Thomas – along with some excellent suppliers – enabled our administration and accounts team to be up and running in Wiser Environment’s offices by 9am the day after the fire. The collections team were out by 7am and materials diverted to our Norfolk site. I don’t believe that any collections were missed, an impressive achievement by any standard.

Our St Ives operations team has been deployed at our Norfolk site since Wednesday. They are showing great morale and patience while we look to reorganise and re-establish some initial business functions in the St Ives area as quickly as possible.

I have been greatly touched by the good wishes from customers, suppliers, neighbouring businesses and residents, and other contacts and the positive attitude shown by staff since over this last week. This has given me great confidence in our ability to move on from this incident and rebuild what we have lost.